her smile the sun, her eyes the stars
by Xairathan
Summary: The story of the end of the world, told in two parts.
1. Chapter 1

The day the world ended was a quiet one like any other. Having lived through Second Impact, Mari was used to grandiose events, like the sea rising through the streets of London in an unrelenting advance, or the sky rippling red and purple and all the colors in between. It was a turquoise sort of green on the day the world ended, the kind that made Mari's heart ache for home.

Second Impact had come with fanfare, namely the howling of water as it surged over the man-made river boundaries, erasing the landmarks that man had so callously seeded across the earth. London was in an uproar, her inhabitants trying to flee the city, or at least get to higher ground. Mari watched it all unfold from the roof of her apartment complex along with several neighbors and three cats that had followed her on the way up the moldering staircase.

Four years later, only one of those cats remained. She welcomed Mari home from classes with a purr as she darted under her legs, a greeting and a demand for food wrapped up in a single sound. Mari set her bag aside and laughed. "Just a minute, Princess," she said. "Missed me, huh?" Princess purred again and followed Mari into the kitchen, lashing her tail from side to side. "Let's see. Food for you, tea for me- what's this?"

Mari looked over at the answering machine, a white chunk of plastic wedged between the radio and the wall. Its light, normally dark, was a slow pulsing green. It hadn't ever been that color for as long as Mari could recall. She only gave her phone number to classmates with whom she'd landed group work, and ensured they called only when she was around to answer. This light was unusual. It was wrong, and it should've been a sign that everything was beginning to unravel. But Mari just pushed her glasses higher up her nose, set Princess' food on the ground, and walked over.

The green light kept blinking. On-off, in time with Mari's steps. Her fingers skated over the unfamiliar surface, fumbling about for the playback button. "You have one message," the machine recited.

Mari wasn't sure what she expected. It could be a telemarketer, asking about one thing or another. It could be a classmate, asking to borrow some notes for a day they'd missed. Or maybe it was neither of these, and it was someone who'd begged her number off a friend to try and talk to her.

She was not expecting silence. Hushed static echoed from the answering machine, occasionally interrupted by the rustle of someone moving near the phone. It stretched on, longer than a moment, and with each second that passed Mari's curiosity turned into flat annoyance. She jabbed at the machine with her hand, stopping herself when at last a familiar voice came from the speaker.

It was a voice she hadn't heard in many years.

"Mari," said Kyoko's voice, and Mari barely held herself back from replying. She watched the answering machine with wide eyes, but the recording was silent again. She tapped the device, wondering if something was making it skip.

"Mari, it's Yui."

And then it was Mari's heart skipping, her knees suddenly too delicate to hold her up. Six years' worth of repressed emotions threatened to topple her composure and knock her to the floor. The machine crackled, and in the broken jumble of noise there was the audible sound of a nose being blown. Mari reached for the buttons, her mind already filling in the gaps with a hundred scenarios of her own. She did not need Kyoko to tell her anything. But those three words had numbed her mind; her fingers were sluggish and stiff, and they fell short.

Kyoko's voice echoed like a rumble of thunder in the stillness of the apartment. "She's dead." And again she said it, so Mari had to acknowledge it and couldn't just pass it off as a trick played by her ears. "Yui's dead."

The world had ended. Mari felt her legs give, but the floor was so impossibly far away; everything was. Kyoko was elsewhere, suffering from the same agony, one that spanned continents. Mari fell, back slamming against the cabinets, legs folding and crumpling beneath her. Kyoko had to be wrong. Yui Ikari couldn't be dead. There was too much youthful joy in her smile, so much life in her everyday motions of breathing and blinking. To say Yui was dead was like saying the sun had ceased to shine, but Kyoko was sobbing in the recording, and so Mari turned her head to look out the window.

The last bits of the sunset shone and peeked through the tilted blinds. Mari squinted into the sunlight, seeking out the fading streaks of color in the sky. The turquoise green was rapidly graying, turning into a darker shade of blue to match the glint in Mari's eyes. Somewhere, Kyoko was speaking. "I'm sorry, Mari. I thought you should know."

The machine clicked. The automated voice asked if she would like to save the message. Mari sat, her weight supported by the tiled floor and the cabinets. If they weren't there, Mari was sure she would fall forever through the ground, in search of the empty hollow in the earth that Yui's body must occupy.

Outside the sun dipped behind the high-rises and the cranes building them, turning them into shadows in a dark expanse dotted by light. From the unlit interior of Mari's apartment, they could be candles set adrift on the swollen Thames, each one a memory of Yui offered for someone, anyone, to take away.

London became a blur of golden lights as Mari shoved her hand under her glasses- the ones that had once been Yui's- and wiped her eyes. Behind her the answering machine clicked and repeated itself, and repeated itself as Mari watched the city become a glittering sea- one that she, alone in the shadowed darkness of her apartment, refused to join.


	2. Chapter 2

The day the world ended for the second or third time- Mari had lost count over the years- it was also unbearably quiet. She was working late in the laboratories when the end came, so quietly that the only disturbance was the radio switching from old-timey music to static. Mari didn't notice anything wrong until someone was walking in, and in her fatigue she could've sworn whoever it was came through the door itself rather than the doorway.

"The lab's closed," she said without looking up. There were more important things to attend to than a lost undergraduate student. But whoever it was refused to leave, walking closer to Mari. She kept her eyes on her work until her unwanted visitor was just meters away, fixing her with a quiet, unrelenting stare. "Look-"

And Mari fell silent. The person who had interrupted her was the spitting image of Yui - only shorter, and with blue hair and red eyes. She found her pencil slipping from her grasp, her mouth hanging open as she struggled to decide whether what she was seeing was truly an apparition, or just something brought on by overwork.

The other girl stepped forward. All of Mari's questions were wiped away in that moment, when the girl grew inexplicably, her school uniform becoming a lab coat that Mari would recognize anywhere.

Never mind the impossibility of the situation. Mari's only thought was, when she had asked Professor Fuyutsuki some years after the fact, he'd told her they had never recovered a body. And that hope, long nourished and kept alive in the darkest corners of Mari's heart, was finally rewarded. Yui Ikari walked around the table, its surface covered in papers and beakers, and extended her arms. Mari's face twisted, tears trickling down the edges of her smile. "I knew you'd come back," she said, and returned Yui's embrace. Yui smiled, a soft lifting of her lips that touched her eyes, and lowered her forehead to rest it against Mari's.

Then everything dissolved into a tangle of red waters, blue skies, and memories, taking Mari with it.

* * *

If this was dying, it was immensely more pleasant than Mari had imagined it to be. Floating along in silence with no cares or worries- she could see the appeal. There were others nearby; she felt them, but they didn't matter. There was a familiar presence somewhere in the distance, calling to her through the sea of souls. _Come to me,_ it seemed to say. So Mari set off, a drifter amidst many like her, letting this singular purpose propel her along.

* * *

Mari found her - Yui - in the greatest concentration of souls. Of course this made sense. Who better to spearhead the salvation of the world than she who had been the center of it? Yui turned as Mari approached, still wearing the smile from before. "Hello." Her voice was fond, but soft, tinged with a sadness that lingered between them longer than it should have. Mari shifted from side to side, waiting for Yui to speak. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you."

"That you were technically alive, or about what you were doing?" Mari spoke with an evenness that took her by surprise. She'd dreamed this scenario a hundred times, and never was she this composed.

"Everything." Yui's smile persisted, but Mari sensed discomfort radiating from her. It washed over the sea in ripples, causing some souls to stir restlessly and send out ripples of their own. "But you understand now, right?"

"Of course," Mari said. Yui's memories, shared through the sea of LCL, were fresh in her mind. Perhaps fresher than some of her own.

"Then I should ask if you'd be willing to forgive me." Yui's face fell, her brows knitting together in that way Mari knew meant she was stressed. "I wanted to protect you from all this. I told myself that if I succeeded, I'd be able to find you and tell you everything."

Mari nodded and motioned to the bodies surrounding them, that floated by above and below and past them. "You call this success?"

"I do. SEELE would've done this regardless of what I did, so-"

"So you took it over." It seemed like such an un-Yui-like thing to do. "Why?"

"And that's the second reason I brought you here." Yui sighed, and the sea itself seemed to roll from side to side, like a breeze had touched its surface. Something passed behind her eyes, and for a moment Mari saw an orange glow shining through them. "Unit-01," Yui said, answering the unspoken question. "I'll be taking it and leaving soon. I thought I'd say goodbye first."

"Leaving?"

"As a testament to humanity's existence." Yui's laugh echoed over the water as she turned her back to Mari. "It sounds much more noble when I phrase it that way, doesn't it? As much as I'd love to stay, Unit-01 is too dangerous to be kept here. So I'm leaving. I-"

"Take me with you." The words left Mari's lips before she realized she was speaking. Yui paused, her head canted to the side, and turned back. Her eyes sparkled with a look of quiet confusion that made Mari wonder if Yui had perhaps misheard her. She stepped closer, raising her voice. "I want to come with you." And almost immediately after she said those words, Mari regretted them. Their friendship had spanned a brief semester, and yet eighteen years later she spoke to Yui as if it was still summer in an unbroken world and expected their brief acquaintanceship to mean anything.

Yui shook her head. "Mari, I'm not coming back. Unit-01 will travel through space until... until the end, I suppose." She shrugged, watching Mari's face carefully for the slightest hint of emotion. She found none, only a stubbornness in Mari's eyes as she stared Yui down. She was daring Yui to reject her again, to shut her out, but in that challenge was hidden a quiet expectation. In the sea of LCL, nothing could be kept hidden. Yui knew the answer, but still she wanted to hear it from Mari herself. "Why?"

"Because I do!" Mari shouted. "You can't just- come back like this, only to tell me you're going to leave again!" She grabbed for Yui's wrist, swiping through only empty air.

Pity filled Yui's voice as she said, "I'm still in Unit-01. You can't reach me from there."

"Then come out of there!" Mari circled around Yui's specter, water splashing around her feet as she yelled, "Let me in!" She reached out, curling her fingers around where Yui's hand should be. There was no reply to her plea- only a quiet that stretched on, until at last Mari looked down at her shoes. "I'd rather be with you," she said. Her trembling hand found the space beside Yui's cheek. "I love you."

"I know you do." Yui wasn't looking at Mari any longer. Her eyes were still, remorseful, distant, and Mari felt her hope retreating, replaced by a fear creeping up her spine. "That's why I tried to keep you out of this."

"It doesn't matter anymore." The walls of Mari's throat were closing up; something was stinging her eyes. Doubtless it was the LCL. "Yui, please. Let me come with you."

Yui said nothing. The ocean lurched and swirled, red water and white waves becoming open, empty sky. Mari swayed with it, her balance disrupted. She fell back, her cry of surprise catching in her chest, and found herself landing on something warm. Yui's eyes sparkled above her, green like the sky at dusk and just as welcome as Mari remembered them to be.

"Mari," she said, a sound that Mari had up until recently heard only in fleeting dreams. Yui's smile was bright, more brilliant than the sun, and Mari's offered grin paled in comparison. There was so much she had to say- it tumbled in her mind and faltered on her tongue, and finally Mari settled on the simplest of greetings.

"Hey, Yui."

"Are you ready to go?"

"Wait-" Mari pushed herself upright, keeping one of Yui's hands clasped firmly in her own. "What about Kyoko?"

Yui's gaze grew distant. "I've asked," she said. "Kyoko doesn't want to come. She wants to stay here, so she can spend some more time with her daughter."

"Daughter," Mari repeated, intrigued by the idea. Out of everyone, Kyoko was the one person she'd least expected to settle down. How much she must have missed when she left Kyoto. "Yui-"

"If you want to come with me, I'd love to have you here."

"That wasn't what I was going to ask."

"Oh?" Yui arched an eyebrow. Even without the sea to tell her, Mari's doubt was easy to read. She wore it etched in her face in the lines of her frown. "What's wrong, then?"

"Your son. What about him?"

Yui shook her head. "I... in leaving him behind, I failed him. Kind of like how I failed you. No, I spoke to him already. He'll be fine. And I'll be looking out for him."

"In space?"

"In space," Yui confirmed. "But he probably won't need me. He's strong on his own."

Somewhere far away, the cacophony of clamoring voices was falling silent. The world was still an open canvas of clouds and sky, but Mari sensed something moving. She realized it was Unit-01, engaging its S2 organ, preparing to break free of the earth's orbit. She looked around for something to grab on to, but Yui put an arm around her shoulder, holding her steady.

Unit-01 pulled away from Third Impact with a great lurch, tearing the Lance of Longinus away with it. It hung in space for a moment, pinned between the pulls of the earth and the moon. Far beyond the blue sky, Mari watched the earth spin into view, its seas red and dotted with crosses the same green as Yui's eyes. Yui squeezed her arm and pulled her closer as Unit-01 finally won free and began to move once again. They stood together, watching the crosses slowly dim and fade, watching the curve of the moon intrude upon their view, until at last they could no longer see the earth. Then Yui turned and looked at Mari, her eyes the green of the sea and the sky, and together they drifted into the stars.


End file.
